"Every idea is wrong"

We hitchhiked from the kibbutz to Lake Kinneret, in an army truck of all things. Of course, being from the English left wing, I didn't want to be seen SUPPORTING the Israeli army by getting in a car with them, but it was hot and we needed a ride. Don't worry, team, I'll make up for it with an extra couple of hours protesting outside Marks and Spencers when I get back.

I know better than this. Sarcasm is like feeding on your own flesh.

Anyway, Lake Kinneret is a small sweet-water sea. Or a big lake. Either way, it’s definitely not a pond. The interesting thing about this big lake/small sea is that as well as hosting immense natural beauty of surrounding gentle desert mountain scenery, it is the very place that Jesus walked on water.

There is a very cool pink church just near the spot with some amazingly colourful artworks of Jesu and The Crew inside, and a grumpy, informative bearded man in the entrance ready to tell shoulder-baring Israeli girls to hide their shame.

Honestly, I can’t take her anywhere…

In the EXACT PLACE (er…) that The Jeez did his high-wire act, there has been a big hoo haa of a stage constructed to make the place seem extra important. Special trees and big plaques have been planted by the symmetrical steps leading to the VERY SPOT that JC performed one his most memorable miracles. It all seems a bit unnecessary, and trite to be honest. But that’s the modern world for you.

Quote of the day:

Me: So where's this Jesus fellow then?

Effie: Shh! He's sleeping.

Yom Kippur began on Sunday at 5pm, and no one is allowed to be on the road after this time. This meant we had a couple of hours to drive around the lake in a borrowed car in order to find a good place to camp for the night. Effie was convinced we could find a nice quiet spot…

Unfortunately for us, it seemed that we were not the first people to have had this idea. Every conceivable entrance to the lake was guarded by security demanding payment of 100 shekels (well over a tenner) to park and camp for the night. By this point, the dream of spending a quiet romantic night together, working on our water-walking tricks was dashed. It seems that every man, his extended family, a barbeque set and their three dogs were out in force.

Eventually we grudgingly agreed on a place and set up camp. As Yom Kippur is a Jewish celebration of fasting, the place was almost entirely free of Jewish people. It was inhabited mostly by Russians and Arabs who like to celebrate a national holiday by ritually charcoaling tonnes of fresh meat and drinking a bottle of vodka each.

We felt like old people as we moaned into our homemade vegetable cheese sandwiches about the noise and the amounts that these philistines like to drink.

The young group immediately beside us did seem to have the most eclectically bad musical taste imaginable. I distinctly remembered hearing 'La Bamba' at one point, closely followed by 50 Cent's 'In Da Club', followed by, I dunno, 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'. Obviously a keen but deaf person among them spent a day compiling the MP3 collection of a retired teenager from the late nineties onto a nightmarish neverending cd.

You ask why we didn't move? We were tired of moving! We'd already moved by the time this group arrived; me having taken an "accidental" battering on the face by a stray tent pole from an inordinately large Russian family. It was a glorious moment, me for the first time able to exact sarcasm in a language I can't even count to ten in.

"Toda. Roba." (Thanks. Alot.)

Thankfully the fabled tiny sea provided enough distraction from the proletariat. We’d already trapped ourselves (we couldn’t drive away after 5pm) in this place and decided that we wouldn’t be fasting, so we took solace in the water. The view is spectacular with total clarity of the soft brown mountains encasing the sweet water. The moon kept darting all over the place, highlighting different parts of the distant street-lit scenery of the faraway towns. Many hours spent sitting together in the sand, staring at the stars and hoping for a bright future...

Today was spent finishing my novel ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ whilst doing my best to stay as still as possible in the intensity of the heat. Then occasional trips to the sea to cool off and swim about.

The novel was spooky, addictive, vaguely inspirational and ultimately a bit irritating.

Tomorrow, if plans go our way: The Dead Sea.

Someone who knows: verdict on the new Bonnie Prince album?